


Embers

by derryday



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Daud (Dishonored), Coffee Shops, Crack Treated Seriously, Human Outsider (Dishonored), Loss of Limbs, M/M, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-30 00:57:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15085526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/derryday/pseuds/derryday
Summary: The boy was back, and with him came the hollow feeling that Daud had seen him somewhere before.





	Embers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fowo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fowo/gifts).



_So take this Night_  
_Wrap it around me like a sheet_  
_I know I'm not forgiven, but I need a place to sleep_

_\--Black Lab, "This Night"_




* * *

The boy was back, and with him came the hollow feeling that Daud had seen him somewhere before.

The Drunken Whaler spat a meager gaggle of late-night guests out into the drenched street. The bell above the door dinged merrily as they shrunk away from the harsh rain.

For a moment they formed an uncertain knot by the door. They squinted into the deluge, looked up and down the street for Weepers. Then they soldiered on with nervous chatter. The door closed behind them.

It was just as well, Daud thought. They were young, wide-eyed, hardly the type who deserved to be hunted down by the Overseers for loitering. With a little luck, they'd find their beds before the Night Watch sniffed them out.

Then there was only the boy, hunched over a table in his customary corner. The storm had not been kind to him. Black hair clung wetly to his temples. The tattoos shone eerily in the half-light.

Drawing the heavy, dusty curtains one-handed was tedious work. But Daud had had some time to grow used to the inconvenience. It'd been three months since he'd woken in the Flooded District, cradling the bloody stump of his left hand, with a headache that ricocheted off the insides of his skull. 

The pain had been relentless. A ravenous creature, let loose in his head. It had consumed great ragged chunks of his memory of the past fifteen years.

He remembered Thomas and Billie. He remembered lumps of whalebone, bound in leather and engraved with strange symbols. 

He couldn't quite recall the incident that'd robbed him of his hand and left him aged far beyond his years. He was not yet fifty, but his hair had greyed completely that day, fading along his temples into generous patches of white. His bones ached when the tide rushed in, and scars old and new stung when the weather changed.

All that remained was the ghoulish image of a mask, cobbled together from sheets of metal. Strange lights and whispers under canopies of purple cloth. A gazebo, a black haired woman who'd died with a small gasp on her lips as her belly yielded softly to his blade.

A sense of guilt like a rotting tooth--rootless, now that he could no longer quite recall what he'd done to earn it. The pulsing pain had become more of an old acquaintance than a true torment.

He pulled one curtain shut, then the other. His fingers, rough from work and old violence, rasped against the silky fabric.

He paused there, looking down at his short, blunt nails. Calluses littered his palm. And still his foolish heart kept beating quicker with hope and trepidation, tumultuous surges of feeling that would've been better suited to a much younger man.

How could he look at his remaining hand, and think for even a moment that his palm might cradle the boy's slender fingers, squeezing gently to warm them?

The alley was nearly empty. A few last stragglers hastened past, hurrying to get home. The big wooden signs that warned of the plague were given a wide berth. On the train tracks, traffic crawled on, sloshing waves of rainwater onto the sidewalks. The headlights of motorized carriages shone through the deluge, like a row of beads on a necklace.

The places where the Void had gnawed on their city had been cordoned off. Detours were in place to account for any new fissures that formed. Chunks of streets and buildings hung suspended in the sky. It was there that the ever-present rain flowed upwards and strange lights flickered, undeterred by the Overseers' grating music. 

If any carriages had actually made it out with their cargo of frightened, soft-fingered lordlings, they'd never been seen or heard from again.

Daud had heard it said that the Outsider himself was prying Dunwall apart, picking off bite-sized pieces and leaving the rest flooded, cracked like a broken mirror.

They said that young Emily Kaldwin had fled with her governess. They said that the Lord Protector rotted in Coldridge Prison, recaptured, awaiting the day Burrows would finally show mercy and have him executed.

The beggars in the streets whispered of the Empire. The great coastal cities of Tyvia, Morley, and Serkonos remained unaffected--it was only Dunwall that had incurred the Void's wrath. The Lord Regent sat friendless in the Tower as the other Isles barricaded the city.

It was just as well. When even the last of Burrows' allies had deserted him, it would be that much easier for Daud to put a knife through his heart.

It was almost ten. By now, the Overseers would've set up checkpoints along the streets and their watchtowers would be lit bright as day. 

Daud squinted out into the street. He saw no masked faces through the rain. Yet. He drew the second curtain, shutting out the long, encroaching Night.

The boy was no stranger here. He'd come by the Drunken Whaler a handful of times, always just at dusk when the shadows lengthened and people started to peer anxiously over their shoulders, looking for lumbering shapes and widening clefts in the pavement.

Without fail, he ordered water: cool and clean, and not briny like the sea. That was what he'd told Billie that first time, earnestly. 

She'd given him an odd, squinty look, like she remembered him from long ago. Daud had held his breath: perhaps that was why the boy seemed so familiar, if he was someone from their shared, bloodied past? 

But in the end Billie had only informed him that they didn't serve salt water anyway.

Sometimes he stayed for only a few minutes, sometimes an hour. Time behaved oddly around him. Between his visits, it skipped like a broken audiograph. When he was there, it stretched and dragged long trails of itself, like overcooked syrup. 

Each time the door fell shut behind the boy, something in Daud held his breath, precisely until the moment he ducked back inside.

Sometimes he swung his legs under the table, looking around eagerly. Nothing was safe from that fierce curiosity: the Drunken Whaler's meager trickle of guests, the napkins Billie stuck into the pocket of her apron, Daud himself--who fumbled and blushed under that gaze and nearly dropped the boy's glass of water, and was rewarded with a dizzying smile on pale lips.

Other times he was quieter, subdued, like the sea at low tide. That was when he sat with his legs drawn up to his chest, gangly limbs folded in. His eyes still followed Daud, an attentive, prickly almost-touch against the back of his neck and between his shoulders. But it was a different kind of look, less vibrantly alive and more... thoughtful. Hopeful. 

This, though--this wasn't something Daud had seen from his strange guest before. He was pale and shivering, soaked to the skin in his ragged shirt and trousers. He looked like he'd drowned long ago and dragged himself through the door on the last dregs of some otherworldly strength.

"Hello," Daud said, and winced at the sound of his own voice: too loud, gruff even when he tried to speak gently. "What will it be?"

The boy looked at him. In the dim light from the counter, even the whites of his eyes looked black. He gave Daud a shadow of a smile. Through cracked lips, he whispered, "Something warm."

A sudden clatter of noise shattered the hush. A sound like breaking twigs, crushed under an unforgiving boot.

Daud lunged for the door. One hand went automatically to his hip--and found not the hilt of a knife, but only emptiness, he had no weapons on him except for a small dagger in his boot--no matter, he bared his teeth and put himself between the boy and the door, whatever was out in the street would have to go through him first--

"Citizens of Dunwall," said the Lord Regent's shaky voice. The old loudspeaker whined in protest, high up above the street. "It is ten o'clock. Curfew is now in effect. Anyone seen loitering will be taken to the Abbey for questioning..."

Daud could have kicked himself. He felt the back of his neck flush red with embarrassment. It'd just been the crackling loudspeaker. Here he was, snarling at the closed door... the boy must think him mad, cowering away from the rabid old dog...

But when Daud turned around, bracing himself, the boy just blinked slowly. The sweep of his eyelashes cast strange shadows across his fine-boned face. He gazed up at Daud, clear and guileless and unafraid.

This close, he smelled of the sea. His shirt was so wet it'd turned translucent. Daud could see the gracefully twisting black tattoos on the boy's narrow chest.

A half-formed memory prickled at the edge of his consciousness, like something seen through a foggy window. 

It was strange, standing by the boy's table. Watching wet hair drip down his forehead and, shadowed by the table, the rise and fall of his belly with his breath. 

For all the bewitched, stumbling beats that his heart had made in the boy's presence, Daud didn't think he'd ever stopped to really _look_ at him before. He'd deposited glass after glass of water, fleeing back to the counter to observe from a safe distance all that pale, tattooed skin and glittering eyes.

Somehow, until now, Daud hadn't been quite sure he was real.

"... our Overseers work tirelessly," droned Burrows on the loudspeaker, less shaky now that he had the echo of his own voice to comfort him, "to protect you all from the Outsider's foul influence. The Night is long, but with their blessing, our fair city will endure the darkness of the Void to see another day."

A high, mechanical whine, more crackling, and the speaker finally shut off.

Into the silence Daud said, dumbly repeating, "Something... warm?"

"Please," the boy said.

Daud looked at the lips that shaped the single word of entreaty, the pale, unmarked throat that bobbed when the boy swallowed. Had his eyes always been this dark? They reflected the light like dying sparks, small constellations of stars that died and flared back to life with each blink of thin, veined eyelids...

At the counter, Billie waited for him with a smirk and a firmly closed till. Daud gave her an exasperated look, but didn't argue. 

He set the kettle on the stove top with his one shaking hand. He took a big, wide-brimmed cup with a chipped handle off the shelf. It was no secret that he'd never charged the boy for anything.

"Get ahold of yourself, old man," Billie whispered to him. "Play your cards right, and you might get lucky tonight."

Daud grimaced. For the umpteenth time he wondered why he let his right-hand woman speak to him like that.

The answer came to him promptly: she had followed him through blood and death, and then she'd followed him even here. Thomas had, too. They had helped him bandage the stump of his wrist, on that bleak, cold day when he'd lost a part of his soul.

Dark circles had settled under Billie's eyes: like all of them, she was afraid. There was perhaps not a single citizen of Dunwall who remained untouched by fear. They skittered through the streets, nearly as mindless as the rats. 

But Billie and Thomas still walked tall and unbowed. Sometimes Daud's chest ached with the conviction that he did not deserve their unthinking trust.

He remembered the Whalers, for the most part. All the lives they'd snuffed out together, remorseless: those were not the painful root of his guilt. He'd trained them, shaped them, held their ragtag group together with... with... 

He no longer recalled what had bound them to him, and his fate to theirs. All he knew was that it had ended with the loss of his hand.

It had torn holes not only into his memory, but Billie and Thomas' as well, albeit they remembered more than he did. They recalled assignments and assassination contracts with great clarity, though they too admitted that there was still something missing, some essential but maddeningly elusive final puzzle piece.

Thomas was in the back room, taking stock of their dwindling pantry and writing up orders that would likely not make it to their doorstep. It was him, solid, dependable Thomas, who'd open the back door for the Night Watch later, who'd report that he was just closing up shop and that he hoped the Night wouldn't be too long.

"Shut up," Daud said, from the corner of his mouth. "It's not... that's not--"

"Of course it is," Billie said. Her smile widened. "You'd know that, if you ever actually watched him back. I've seen the way he stares at you. You run from him, but he does."

"That's not...," Daud said again, lamely, because that last bit at least was true.

The boy-- _looked_ at him. Watched him. Followed his every movement with his strange eyes, as if he found some hidden poetry in the way Daud clumsily poured heated water through a coffee filter.

He looked at Daud like he could see the blood on his hands and wanted to taste it.

It hurt sometimes, this jagged crater where his memories had been. Just like he felt some phantom sensation in his lost hand, the empty places in him ached when the boy was near. 

Every time, he felt down to his bones that it was _right_ that the boy was here, sheltered from the rain and safe from the Overseers. 

The old Daud, the Daud-that-was, remained a shadow, a flicker of movement at the corner of his eye. The Drunken Whaler was a conglomerate of his past self's every yearning, wistful thought, glimpsed through a thick fog. 

It was a harbor, a safe haven for the boy, or perhaps for someone else who wore his face, someone he had forgotten.

More than once he'd caught Billie and Thomas whispering, though they always stopped when he came by. They wondered at this strange inclination the same way he did himself. A blade for hire turned waiter and inexpert brewer of mediocre cups of tea?

There were many things on the minds of Dunwall's citizens. An empty cafe with a perpetually scowling owner was not one of them. Memory-less and drifting, Daud found a strange purpose in how his savings dwindled.

Their meager menu, the mismatched chairs, the chipped cups and mugs he'd salvaged from abandoned apartments--they were like a net tossed out into the flooding tide. Every day, Daud hoped to catch the fleeting memory of a boy with black eyes.

Daud sighed and opened the drawer that held their loose teas. Something warm, the boy had said. He tapped a blunt fingernail against a few tins, considering. 

It wasn't that the boy stoked any unseen fires in him. No one ever had. Men, women--they all left him cold when, eventually, the rare warmth of friendship turned to something else. No one had ever enticed him to burn like they did.

It was like watching a crowded room. Throngs of people tangled and entwined, going about the capricious behavior that would ever remain strange and alien to him. Daud stood outside as the glass fogged up from his breath. 

Some faraway loneliness pulled at him. But he had no true wish to join them.

No, the boy did not set him ablaze any more than the few, methodical dalliances of his youth had. This was something else.

This sat in a sheltered hollow between his lungs. It writhed and squirmed like an animal waking from a long hibernation, beat its little wings against the scars that covered his ribs.

It made his blood sing and his tongue stumble over even the simplest of greetings. Like precious nectar, it lapped up every gaze, every one of the boy's softly spoken words.

The Outsider take his foolish sentimentalisms, but sometimes Daud almost wished that his face weren't so scarred and craggy with premature age, that he might look handsome when he smiled.

"Better hurry," Billie said, no longer teasing but softer, understanding. "The Night will be long."

In the end, it was a cup of ginger tea that Daud brought back to the boy's table, steaming and spicy. He'd chopped fresh slices of ginger, dropped them in boiling water and infused the concoction with cinnamon and honey.

He'd ignored Billie's little gasp as he'd reached all the way into the back of the cupboard for the honey. It was the last glass they had left. The texture had thinned over the months, but it was still rich and sweet, smelling faintly of wildflowers and morning dew.

The boy was still shivering. He'd curled up tight in his chair. Even his smile trembled. Daud paused, awkwardly hovering, and fought his instinct to flee--he could just drop the mug on the edge of the table and book it to the back room, ask Thomas to turn up their aged thermostat...

But the boy was already unwinding, long fingers reaching, exposing the veins on his wrists where the tattoos didn't reach. His customary black nail polish was chipped badly.

The sight of his nail beds, blueish from the cold, firmed Daud's resolve. He took a deep breath and handed him the tea. 

The mug passed from Daud to him. The boy's fingers brushed against the back of his hand.

Two steps carried Daud to the door, where he stood and breathed and felt the echo of the boy's touch like a brand, indelible. Rain pounded against the door and rattled the window. 

He reached blindly for the wardrobe, barely able to see in the gloom. There was Billie's coat, and Thomas', still damp from when he'd been out earlier... and here was his, dark red and well-worn, with its plush lining. 

The boy would all but drown in his coat. Daud could probably wrap it around him twice over. It was threadbare, perhaps, but still offered warmth. 

The boy was sipping his tea when he turned back, his thin, angular face bent over the mug. Daud almost warned him that the tea was quite hot, then caught himself: the boy was young, yes, but not that young.

He shook out his coat, then stared at the boy's slumped shoulders. He could count the knobs of his spine through his wet shirt. The back of his hand ached. 

The boy looked at him, then at the coat. His lips parted with soft surprise. His eyes--they were like the encroaching Night, Daud thought blurrily, dark and near-starless--

The boy scooted forward in his chair. The back of his shirt came away from the wood with a wet sucking sound.

Daud dropped the coat around the boy's shoulders. The coat was heavy even for him. He settled it gently, like the boy might fade away under the unwieldy weight.

The boy hummed in pleasure. He ducked and shivered, pale fingers coming up to close around the lapel. 

Daud exhaled a shaky breath. It did-- _something_ to him, to see the slim shoulders engulfed in his coat, warm and safe from the city's pervasive chill.

It wasn't the roar of a stoked fire. Not like Billie thought. It was an ember, glowing blood-hot and deep in the ashy hearth that was Daud's heart.

There was the counter, a safe haven where Billie frankly grinned at him and gave him a not-so-covert thumbs up. Heat rose to Daud's face. And still the boy looked at him. He glanced at the other chair, dipping his chin towards the scratched wooden back.

Daud blinked, caught wrong-footed. He took an uncertain step towards the chair. What could the boy possibly want with him? 

But he was rewarded with a small smile, sent Daud's way over the rim of the mug. Before Daud knew what had hit him he was sitting down, pulled in by how the boy's luminous eyes crinkled at the corners.

"What are you doing out so late?" Daud said. He cleared his throat. "Curfew's in place for a reason."

He hadn't really expected the boy to reply, but he did. He said, "And what reason would that be?"

The sound of his voice, less weak and hoarse now, sent a long shiver down Daud's spine. "The Night?" he offered, more gruffly than he'd meant to. "The Outsider, trying to drown us all?"

The boy smiled. The honeyed tea had brought some color to his face. A flush stained his cheeks and ears. His lips were wet and pink. "The Night," he repeated, tilting his head like a curious bird. "How long do you think it will be?"

"Long," Daud said, darkly. "If the last one's anything to go by." 

The last one... no one knew exactly how long it'd been. At some point, even the Clocktower lost all meaning, and that point arrived well before its foundation had cracked under a long, narrow tear in the pavement. 

Daud had weathered the Night like he had weathered Dunwall's slow collapse before: alone, holed up in his small, sparsely furnished bedroom above the Drunken Whaler.

The rain had drummed relentlessly against his window. Masonry groaned and creaked as cracks opened up across the cobblestones. Lumps and stretches of streets and alleys were pulled away and upward by a huge, unseen hand.

Strange shadows lumbered through the gloom. Some of the beggars claimed they looked like whales, huge and floating. The Overseers' ghastly masks were everywhere, white and shining. 

Daud had listened to the screaming in the streets and the otherworldly, distorted wails that drifted in from the sea, until both had mingled into one mournful song.

"They say that even the darkest Night must end," the boy said. His voice was whisper-soft, reciting something he'd heard long ago. "That daylight will follow."

Daud snorted. "The Overseers say that," he pointed out. "They're just trying to keep the city together." 

And, he added silently, to keep their coffers filled with the money of frightened citizens. Elderly lords paid small fortunes for masked Overseers to walk down their street, turning and turning the cranks of their music boxes to keep the Void at bay.

The boy tapped his fingers against the mug, thoughtful. Some of his nails were ragged and torn, like he'd clawed at something in the dark.

"What do you think will happen, then?" he asked. The shifting shadows cast a strange look over his youthful face. For just a moment his eyes seemed pitch black. "To Dunwall, to us?"

Daud swallowed hard against a suddenly dry throat. There the boy sat, unassuming, utterly dwarfed by the bulk of his coat. 

And yet floor tilted under Daud's feet. He felt caught in the ageless, mesmerizing gaze of some creature on the prowl, whose long, bone-white fangs he saw only in flashes until the moment of attack.

"I think," he found himself saying, "that Dunwall is dying."

The boy watched him, unblinking. "And yet you are still here."

The oppressive weight of his regard lifted a bit, gentling like a fading storm. Daud found his chest freed from that sudden constriction.

His hand hurt.

He shrugged. "I've nowhere to go. They say no one makes it out of the city anyway."

The boy's lips parted. He leaned far across the table. Water dripped from his shirt. His eyes gleamed with a strange kind of hope. Waiting, almost trembling, on the cusp of something that made Daud's chest ache in sympathy. 

Daud said, "And I think there's no stopping the Outsider if he wants to kill us all."

The boy sat back in his chair. He looked obscurely disappointed. "You are a pessimist."

"A realist," Daud corrected. "If you were an ancient meddling god, and this city displeased you, wouldn't you wipe it away?"

"It isn't about wiping it away," the boy said, firmly, like he knew. "It is about washing it clean."

Daud snorted. If this deluge of rain continued, he wasn't sure how much cleaner the soot-stained streets could get. The storm drains had overflowed a long while ago.

"Washing it clean," he repeated. His knuckles ached, like a fresh bruise. He shook out his hand. "By whose definition? The Overseers'?"

The boy's eyes narrowed. "The _Overseers,"_ he said. "They think they can stitch the city back together with their monstrous tunes. They hunt for runes and shrines even now, feeling so very _righteous..."_

Daud coughed discreetly. "I think it's more about preventing open panic," he said.

The boy scoffed. His ragged fingernails drummed a quick staccato against the mug. "What does it matter if Dunwall goes quietly or dies screaming?"

"A fellow pessimist," Daud said, with some satisfaction.

The boy opened his mouth, then closed it. He gave Daud an exasperated look. The quirk of a smile lurked in the corner of his mouth.

Daud's heart thumped ridiculously. Here they were, talking about the patient, eroding horror that'd befallen the city. Somewhere, the Night sunk its teeth into some unlucky alley. But that flutter in Daud's chest burned bright and fierce.

Somewhere, distantly, the broken Clocktower chimed and clanged. The bells tolled thrice.

Daud's chest felt tight, like he'd been holding his breath. The shrinking tunnel of his focus tore open like a veil. The scent of ginger tea hit him, spicy and sweet. He became suddenly aware of Billie, puttering around at the till and exchanging some quiet words with Thomas.

And the boy was holding the mug with both hands, sipping steadily, licking honey off his lips. He gazed back at Daud placidly. His eyes were unfathomably dark.

The Clocktower might have been broken, but the toll of its bells still marked the passing of time. Curfew was in full swing, and Overseers would be prowling along the street outside his curtained window...

Daud swallowed hard. The back of his hand burned and stung. If they found the boy--and something in him cried out in wordless denial at the thought that the boy would _leave,_ walk out into the storm with bare feet--if they found him...

If they found him, they would drag him to the Abbey. They'd strap him to a chair and shout at him. Broad palms would slap his pale cheeks a ruddy red. 

Smoking concoctions would be poured down the boy's throat, tinctures to make him tell them which arcane arts he'd practiced. In the end they would wring a confession out of him, screamed through bloodied lips, that it was him who'd finally tipped the centuries-old scales and brought the Void in from the sea to devour their plague-ravaged city.

He looked at the boy. Words hovered awkwardly on the tip of his tongue. How was he supposed to put it into words--this deep, unerring certainty that he would raze Dunwall to the ground with his own two hands if only the boy would be safe? 

"Do you..." Daud cleared his throat. "Do you need... do you have a place to stay? --The Night,” he added hastily. “Just for the Night.”

The boy stared at him. He took a breath. His hands went limp around the mug. In the sudden hush, Billie clattered around with some cups. 

Daud held back a groan, hoping fervently that she hadn't heard. She'd never let him live this down. 

An old, guilt-stooped man, inviting this boy to spend the Night with him? Daud cringed. He felt clumsy and too big, a hulking shape hunched towards the boy like a lurking gargoyle.

Impossibly, the boy's eyes softened. His brow furrowed with unknown sorrow. 

"Oh, Daud," he said. His voice shook. "Still? Even now, you…?” 

A lance of almost-pain speared right through Daud's chest: the boy knew his name--

The back of his hand _burned._

Daud hissed through his teeth, shaking out his fingers. The skin was red and irritated. Pain stabbed right through his hand, engraving itself on his metacarpals. Something in him, a buried relic from the Daud-that-was, surged with a fierce and terrible joy. 

A mark appeared on his hand, spidery black. 

The boy clung to his mug like a lifeline. He was breathless, shivering, staring at Daud with fear and hope...

A great chunk of memory fell from the cracked plaster of the ceiling.

Pain seized him by the temples, dull-hot and merciless. Daud's back bowed under its force. He might have cried out, but he couldn't hear his own voice over the roar of blood in his ears. 

Sounds and images poured into his mind. Like rushing water, his hollow spaces were filled.

The boy, coming to him long ago on trails of black fog… he'd bestowed his favor on him, and Daud, younger and more reckless with both his blade and his heart, had been drunk on it. A god, choosing _him,_ a bright spear of purpose through Dunwall’s smoke-spewing sprawl... 

Those infinitely dark eyes... they'd watched him. With barely there interest at first, then with puzzled curiosity and something like respect. Cracks had formed in the haughty detachment, hard-earned and all the more precious for it.

Raw, untethered power flooding his veins, guiding his blade. Unspooling into fine threads that bound the Whalers to him. Their companionship, forged in Dunwall’s gutters and back alleys...

Jessamine Kaldwin’s gaze as she'd stepped between him and her daughter, furious and frightened. His sword, buried to the hilt just under her breastbone, had left an invisible festering wound on Daud's conscience. 

It'd been so strange to realize that even the Empress bled red.

Billowing purple cloth, pale discs of whalebone, and the drifting lights of the shrine in the Flooded District--abandoned right when Daud had dealt a fatal blow to Dunwall itself. 

He had outlived his usefulness. His black-eyed boy had turned to newer, shinier baubles. Jealousy had eaten away at him, a shameful, parasitic growth.

The crunch of Corvo's blade cutting through sinew and bone, neatly severing his Marked hand at the wrist. Another unseen injury, cleaved straight through his skull, that'd pulled out his memories by the roots and left his soul ragged and torn.

Months of careening vertigo, drifting through Dunwall in a daze. The Whalers, powerless and scattered to the wind. Billie and Thomas, staying by his side despite the holes in their memories. 

And waiting, always waiting. Oh, how his pulse had leaped, that first time the boy had set foot on his doorstep. The empty spaces in his soul had sung with delight even as Daud fled to the till, flustered and red-faced, when the boy gifted him his smile.

The incessant rain, the Nights, even the Void's hold on Dunwall's brittle fragments... all of that had sunk away. Only that warm glow in Daud's old heart remained. 

Two hands were touching him. One palm pressed coolly to his hot forehead, his cheek.  
The other fastened itself around his shoulder. 

Daud had doubled over under the memories' bludgeoning force. The boy had jumped out of his chair. He clutched at Daud's bowed shoulders, trying to steady him against the onslaught.

"Daud," the Outsider said. Only that, like a prayer, or a benediction. His breath tickled Daud's cheek. _"Daud."_

Daud closed his eyes. He couldn't breathe. His heart thrashed against his ribcage like a trapped bird. How were the boy's hands so soft? 

His brain seemed to pulse between his ears, gray matter writhing. His consciousness was a hapless swimmer out at sea, his feet kicking uselessly as a great wave scooped him up, afloat on some primal benevolence that was older than the water itself. 

Words stuck in his throat, sour with regret. He could see the boy's eyes clearly now, utterly black.

"I have failed you."

The Outsider shook his head. "No," he said, fiercely. "You are a fool if you truly believe that."

Daud stared at him. Just the sight made the ache in his head throb harder: a god kneeling before him, watching him anxiously. The ends of his hair were still wet. Those eyes glittered like a starlit sky. He was real, from the strange tattoos to the pale toes of his bare feet.

"I almost could not believe it when I finally found you," the Outsider whispered. "Here, of all places. I found many others while traveling. I found the reckless, the desperate, the ones who've gone mad from the call of the Void. Then finally, you. I was... I was so relieved."

Daud thought of the scoundrels that roamed the streets--unchecked, now that the City Watch had fallen. They stole Overseer uniforms and terrorized frightened citizens, demanding coins and far more unsavory favors for protection from the Void...

"When he struck you down..." The Outsider trailed off. His hands hovered uncertainly over the stump of Daud's left wrist. "Afterwards, I-- I couldn't _see_ you anymore. I thought... I feared you might be dead."

The Outsider's eyes had no irises. Daud still sensed that otherworldly gaze on him, raking down his chest, lingering on his shoulders. The boy's lips parted to let out a shivery breath. He looked at Daud like he was starving, like Daud's scarred, aged face was the finest thing he'd ever seen.

One pale hand reached for him. Daud held his breath. The boy's fingers touched his chest, right over his heart.

His expression crumpled. "Why here?" the Outsider asked, and there was something like anguish in the trembling corners of his mouth. "I looked for _so long."_

Daud ached to see the boy like this--a god, who blinked dampness from his eyelashes and looked at him with open entreaty. He said dumbly, "We-- we were going to kill the Lord Regent." 

Even unmarked and drifting, Billie and Thomas hadn't protested when he'd told them in halting words what he wanted to do. They'd agreed placidly, like this last effort was just another assassination contract they'd accepted over the years...

 _Billie._ She must've been standing by the till for an age, watching. Daud whirled around, the old chair creaking in protest--

And saw her frozen mid-movement, one hand raised towards the cupboard, the other holding a dishcloth.

A long, gaping fissure split the tiled floor. It bisected even the wall. The window was caught in the middle of breaking, shards of glass bursting behind the curtains.

Daud stared at the frozen tableau, dazed. He might as well have taken a hard blow to the head, for all that he understood what his eyes told him. 

"What..."

The Outsider brushed his fingers down the sleeve of Daud's shirt. He didn't touch his stump, but he cupped his chilly hands around Daud's remaining hand. 

"Why _here?"_ he repeated. He flicked a look around the room. "What is all this?"

The back of Daud's neck burned with embarrassment. That first time the boy had walked through his door, the hairs on his arms had stood on end. A _rightness_ had slotted into place like a key finding its lock.

It seemed ridiculous now, sentimental. Daud looked at his hand. It was held snugly between the Outsider's hands, the knuckles flushed with warmth. 

The Outsider was a god, an ageless entity, and _that_ was what'd remained of him after Daud's memories had drained from him? 

The Outsider went still. "Daud," he said. Daud shivered. How was his name such a soft, intimate thing in the boy's mouth? "Is it... was it for me?"

Daud couldn't look at him. Who was he, among the Outsider's supplicants, to dare to believe he could shelter him? --But the boy had come to him. Had looked for _him,_ not for Attano. 

"It-- it was also for Billie and Thomas," he said to his knees, because it was true.

Billie, who was still standing frozen by the counter, unblinking. The shards of breaking glass from the window hung suspended, glittering. The whale oil lamp at the door flickered from time to time, and the light was the only thing that moved, chasing shadows across Billie's still face.

The crevice in the floor seemed to yawn open wider. The tiles around it were splintered and broken. 

A low, unearthly moan drifted out of the fissure, echoing off its craggy walls.

Daud shivered. He couldn't help it. The dagger in his boot might as well have been gone entirely for all the good it would do against whatever lurked below.

His mouth had gone dry. He licked his lips. "What's..."

The Outsider touched his stump, the place where his hand had been. He ran soft fingertips over the gnarled scars where Thomas had done his best to close the remains of his skin over the wound. 

The sutures had left scars of their own, jagged pockmarks that dotted his stump. The hand that was no longer there ached suddenly, as if it felt the ghost of the Outsider's touch. 

In a small voice, the Outsider said, "He took you from me."

Daud stared at him. He realized he was holding his breath, and let it out in a rush. "Who?" he asked, though he was fairly sure he knew the answer.

 _"Corvo,"_ the Outsider said. He cupped his palm over the old wound. His words came like a gush, pressure draining from a wound. "He took you and it-- it was like nothing I'd ever felt, not in this life or the next. I was so _angry._ I had to find you."

He said it like that way the end of it, the full, concise reason why he was here now, and why tattoos spread across his pale chest. Like it was the only truth that mattered.

Goosebumps rushed down Daud's back, icy and thrilling. His phantom fingers seemed to stretch, his wrist turning to fit the boy's hand into his bigger palm. 

He had to swallow hard before he could speak. "You've found me."

"So I have." Those eyes feasted themselves upon him, long lashes casting shadows every time he blinked. "Daud..." 

Daud shifted uncomfortably. His heart thumped hard against his ribs. The boy sighed out Daud's name like it was the finest word he'd ever tasted...

"You were so very hard to track down. I couldn't _see_ you anymore," the Outsider said again, "and you used to shine so brightly."

Daud huffed, the tips of his ears heating up. For three months he'd forgotten the odd, meandering poetry of the Outsider's words, and now that he had it back he squirmed under the boy's unwavering gaze.

"But all of this," Daud said, and glanced at the broken window, the chunks of Dunwall that floated high above, "the Void, the Nights... you..."

 _It cannot have been all for me._ The words stuck in his throat.

The thing in the floor let out another low wail. The door rattled and creaked on its hinges. It was a noise unlike anything Daud had ever heard: forlorn and plaintive, resonating deeply enough to make his teeth hurt.

"I was angry," the Outsider repeated, more to himself than to Daud. "I... I'd forgotten what that felt like."

He touched Daud's remaining hand. He took it between both of his, as though all five of Daud's fingers were a rare and precious gift.

"It is out of my hands, now," he said. "It's like an avalanche. I started it but it gained momentum all on its own."

Something in Daud's chest ached, seeing his hand held so gently. But he still stared at the boy in disbelief. "You were angry that I was... gone, and you did-- all this?" 

That got him a half-hearted glare. "You needn't sound so surprised. You must know that you are precious to me."

Daud bit back the first few bitter, ugly things he might have said. They had no place here--not while the Outsider held onto his hand. His jealous anger had burned itself out with the pain of his regained memories. 

"I had my doubts for a while," he said, only a little gruff.

"Then that is my fault and not yours," the Outsider said fiercely. "Daud, how can you--? It is so _vexing,"_ his fingers curled into a fist, clutching at Daud's sleeve. "All of this, it is nothing like what I expected, but I don't regret a minute of it. I do not regret anything. Do you hear me?"

His eyes were as dark as they'd ever been. Goosebumps had risen on the boy's slim shoulders--Daud's coat had long since dropped to the floor, discarded in a heap when a god had jolted out of his chair to lay steadying hands on Daud's shoulders.

The floor heaved slowly. Daud's chair slid a few inches, on legs that creaked in protest. Tiles shattered into shards of ceramic. Plaster flaked off the walls. Billie stood silent and still.

A cold trickle of fear slipped down his back. He had to swallow twice before he could speak, and even then his voice was hoarse. 

"What... what are you?"

The Outsider bit his lip, a quick flash of teeth that left a reddened indent. His gaze flickered across Daud's face.

"You were lost to me," he said, slowly, testing out each word as they came to him one by one. "I saw no other way. I couldn't..." 

His eyes fluttered shut. A frown creased his brow. Daud couldn't be sure, but he thought he felt a tremor go through the hands that held his.

"I forgot how frightening it was to walk this world." The boy looked down at their joined hands, his shoulders hunching. "What it is like to have a beating heart."

Suddenly, Daud found that he could move, and he did, twisting his hand and locking his fingers around the boy's slender wrist. "What have you _done?"_

The Outsider smiled, and it was a jagged, broken thing. "When the last leviathan is gone," he said, "darkness will fall."

Daud stared at him. His thoughts raced, tumbled over each other like a flock of startled birds. What in the blasted Void did that mean? Darkness _had_ fallen, or what else was he supposed to call the lengthening Nights?

The Outsider jostled his wrist. Daud's grip opened at once. But the boy just moved to hold his hand again, encasing Daud's rough palm in what little warmth his slim fingers held.

Daud asked his question then, whispered it into the scant few inches between them. "Was it for me?"

The boy looked up at him in surprise. His frown melted away. His lips parted around a sigh of relief: now, there was nowhere left to go but forward.

"Yes."

That single, simple word was like a blow to the sternum. Daud's breath left him in a rush. For a moment he almost laughed in sheer disbelief. 

_"Why?"_

The Outsider leaned in close. His forehead bumped gently into Daud's and stayed there, soft, damp black hair curling against the scar that bisected Daud's brow.

Into the scant few inches between them, he exhaled a trembling breath. "You know," he whispered. "Daud. You _must_ know."

Somehow, Daud's hand had found its way to the Outsider's cheek. He watched, fascinated, as it went rosy under his fingers. "I thought you didn't play favorites."

The boy huffed a small laugh. They were so close that Daud could taste the sea on his breath. "I don't. But you..."

He left the sentence unfinished. But his cheek grew even warmer under Daud's palm, and that was enough.

Distant screams echoed down the street. The thing in the floor let out a muted howl. On the table, the boy's mug shuddered and chipped, small chunks of porcelain flaking off.

A huge shadow drifted past outside. From the corner of his eye, Daud saw it move to block out the single street lamp's feeble light.

"What is that?" he whispered. He didn't turn to look. Somehow, he knew that whatever it was, it wasn't here for them.

The Outsider sighed noisily, like he wished Daud could've held his peace for longer. He leaned back on his heels, grimacing. Daud winced in sympathy for his aching knees. 

"Something beyond my control," he said, with slow reluctance. Daud had the sudden, strange thought that the Outsider did not like to admit that after he'd warped the very fabric of reality around Dunwall, the city had slid out of his grasp. 

"My powers are fading. This--," he gestured to the crack in the floor, "this was the best I could do. The Night will be long, but nothing will come for you."

Daud rose slowly, his own knees creaking in protest. The Outsider watched him, silent and kneeling. Daud's hand slipped from his loose hold.

"Billie and Thomas," Daud said, haltingly. "What about them? Will they be safe too?"

The boy looked affronted that Daud even had to ask. "Yes."

Daud stared at them doubtfully. He saw now that Billie's mouth was half open, like she'd been mid-remark to Thomas. Thomas, he saw only as a mop of unruly hair just beyond the pantry door, stooping to pick something up.

The Outsider huffed, somewhat put upon. "They will wake up once dawn breaks."

"Will they remember?" Daud flexed his hand, where the new Mark shimmered in the low light. "Now that I've got my memories back..."

There was a brief, possessive gleam in the boy's black eyes. "No," he said. "Only you."

Daud cleared his throat, then subsided. His face felt rather warm. 

The Outsider shifted on the floor. One pale foot poked out of the sodden leg of his trousers. Daud held out his hand. The boy took it and rose, stumbling.

This close, the Outsider was shorter than him, but not by as much as Daud had thought. These past months he'd slouched a lot, hunched his shoulders and sat curled up in his chair by the door. It shrunk him somewhat, shortened his gangly limbs.

Daud's heart squeezed suddenly. He imagined the boy wandering the streets of Dunwall, powerless and mortal, flinching at every shadow in this unfamiliar realm.

Now, the Outsider stood straight and tall, just half a head shorter than him. He looked so human that it made Daud ache. His hair curled damply against his temples. The hand that Daud still held twitched in his loose grasp.

"You asked me a question," the boy said. "I... I wish to answer."

The words were stilted. His cheeks were still flushed, and darkened further under Daud's searching gaze. It occurred to Daud, quite suddenly, that the boy did not know the steps to this dance either, and they were both of them fumbling around in the dark.

"What?" Daud breathed. 

"I... I do not," the Outsider said. He bit his lip uncertainly, but didn't flinch away. His fingers curled around Daud's wrist. "I don't have a place to stay the Night."

"Yes, you do," Daud said. "You're not going back out there alone."

The boy's lips parted in surprise. Daud winced. "I-- I mean, if you...," he amended, "that is, only if..."

The Outsider stared at him, wondering. _That_ look, Daud was all too familiar with: it pinned him, dissected him. But this time, something hopeful trembled just underneath.

"You would... let me stay?" the Outsider breathed. "Here, with you?"

Daud almost laughed in disbelief that he even had to ask. "Of course."

Some last bit of tension in the boy wilted. His eyes fluttered shut. He swayed on his feet.

The skin of his eyelids was so thin that Daud could see how dark his eyes were beneath them. Daud touched him then, put a hesitant hand on his shoulder. The bony jut of the boy's collarbone dug into his palm.

"Are you alright?" he asked, and, "You didn't think I'd just throw you out, did you?" And finally, defensively, "It's dangerous out there, you know?"

The Outsider opened his eyes to narrow slits, blinking dazedly. "I know," he said. He leaned into Daud's hold on his shoulder with unthinking trust. "Daud. I am tired."

Daud gently rubbed his thumb over the blueish jugular vein he could see at the boy's throat. "It's alright," he said. "We... you could lie down upstairs. --Just to sleep."

That jarred some awareness back into the boy's tired face. His frown cleared into sudden understanding.

He put his hand on Daud's chest, right over his heart. "Oh, Daud," he said, gently, like Daud was the skittish one. "You must sleep too. I will be glad for your warmth."

Fingers pulled at the collar of his shirt. There was no way the boy's flimsy hold could've moved him, but Daud yielded readily, leaning where the pale hands pulled him.

The Outsider stretched up on his bare toes. He kissed Daud's forehead, close to where his hair had gone white and grey from the shock of losing the Mark. His lips were chapped from the cold.

It was perhaps the softest thing that'd ever been done to him. Daud squeezed his eyes shut, sucking in a pained breath. Like the new Mark, the kiss seemed to linger, sinking down and down and nestling right above his heart.

Distant shrieks echoed through the alley, the noises of something dead or dying. Distorted by distance, they were like the mournful, hoarse calls of the whaling trawlers, though the Wrenhaven had seen none in weeks.

The looming shadow was gone, and with it the howling. Whatever had cast it must have drifted away. Or perhaps it had never really existed, and had been only an echo, pulled into this realm by unearthly forces.

Rain pelted against the door and dripped through the broken window. The deluge was so forceful that it coated everything in a fine mist and the old whale oil lamps flickered. Water ran down into the wide, jagged crack in the floor. It shone wetly on the broken tiles and Daud felt a stir of alarm when he realized the Outsider was still barefoot.

Some of the boy's hair had dried enough to stick up in chaotic tufts. The shirt, too, was drying, though he still shivered at times. Daud thought privately that perhaps he just had no way of processing this yet--his mortal body's need for warmth.

"Wait," he said to the boy, who was halfway across the room, staring with fascination at the till. "Your feet..."

The Outsider looked down at his feet, with the bemused gaze of someone who hadn't had to think about such trivialities in several centuries. His toes were reddened from the cold.

He left damp footprints on the floor. He picked his way over to the stairs, hidden behind a ratty curtain by the pantry. He stepped over the crack--had it widened again, soundlessly?--and there he stopped and fixed Daud with an expectant stare.

Daud felt his face go hot. He'd just been standing there, rooted to the spot, like the Outsider himself shuffling towards that curtain was the most riveting thing he'd ever seen.

He really should've been showing the boy up to his small bedroom, rummaging around in his sparse wardrobe for something dry that might fit him. He should've put the kettle on again--would it even boil, with Billie standing so still and silent right next to it?--and brewed more ginger tea...

The Outsider sighed at him. He held out a beckoning hand. "Won't you come along?"

The back of Daud's neck burned. He felt too big for the room, too old and craggy to follow the boy's nimble footsteps. But the Outsider had _asked_ for him.

He gingerly picked his way past Billie. Thomas was bent in half in the pantry, turned towards her, his mouth open at an unflattering angle.

"They will wake up at dawn," the Outsider said again, following Daud's gaze. "Do not worry about them."

An order, this, imperiously given and expecting to be obeyed. Daud bit back a smirk. The stir of nerves in his belly quieted down. This was the boy he knew, demanding his full and undivided attention.

He felt a strange charge run across his skin when he stepped over the fissure. It was like spending a few seconds with wads of cotton stuffed into his ears. On the other side, the air tasted different, metallic.

The boy stood on the bottom step. It put them at eye level. The Outsider took his hand. His palm was soft and cool. He fastened his fingers around the remains of Daud's left wrist.

His eyes were like captured starlight, warm glimmers in endless black. Daud took a deep breath that expanded his ribs and set his heart to beating. The Outsider led him up into the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> I never thought I'd ever write Daudsider, and yet here we fucking are! I blame [fowo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fowo/pseuds/fowo) for this one. They're awesome, pass it on. Their prompt was "coffee shop AU" and I decided to try and make it work in the canon era.
> 
> I think it was [dr-teatime](http://dr-teatime.tumblr.com) who first unearthed that juicy bit of unused material from the game where Daud chops off Corvo's Marked hand at the beginning of the Flooded District level. I thought that was really freaking cool and wondered what would've happened if it'd been the other way around. 
> 
> I'm a bit nervous about posting this, given that I've never written for this ship before. I hope you liked it! 
> 
>  
> 
> *posts from mobile* PARKOUR 


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